


Ghostfire

by TimaeusFaustus



Series: Highlander [1]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Elder Dragon War, Oldwalkers, Pre-Mending, canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 12:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8488831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimaeusFaustus/pseuds/TimaeusFaustus
Summary: Before he was the Forever Serpent, Nicol Bolas was one of many. Younger than now, some 25,000 years ago, at the dawn of the modern multiverse, he has yet to discover the twisting path his life will take him. On a distant, summertime morning, a long time ago, on a plane far, far away, the young whelp will discover something else instead - something he'll find grow scarcer and scarcer as he ages.Nicol Bolas will discover a friend.





	

Zikkam was a largely empty plane, the leylines of black and blue mana weaving through its land and sky were about the only thing of note at any point of the horizon. It was uncivilised, barren, and rarely visited by any of the Elder Dragons.

It was Bolas' favourite place to meditate. 

He liked to come here in the dark hours of the morning, sneaking away from the warrens of his family's hoard and the guttural echoes of his mother's gargantuan slumbering to secure himself precious days to think. If he escaped soon enough without being spotted, nobody knew to follow him, or how to do so, and often he could manage to make his way back to the Moutainhold his family had reduced an entire plane to before anybody had even noticed. Tirra Bolas was a deep sleeper, and the cult of humans that had settled the base of her mountain though of her as the moon, as she would often disappear when the silver beacon was at its newest, when she could no longer draw power from it and needed time to recharge. 

That usually suited Bolas fine. He hadn't done enough with his life yet to need such a huge power reserve, and regardless, tying your abilities to the moon of a single plane limited him too much. He was an explorer, and didn't believe in tethering himself anywhere. That was why Zikkam appealed to Bolas. No moon in the sky, no mountains on the horizon, just miles and miles of misty, scarred landscape, every mile of it dotted with crevice after crevice. For a creature that could fly, these crevices were a treasure-trove unto themselves. Occasionally, fledgling planeswalkers would take a trip to Zikkam, and often case, that 'trip' was rather literal. If he looked hard enough, and for long enough, he could find relics and unneeded belongings from planes he'd never even visited. Some of the devices and trinkets he'd found were so exotic that he'd yet to find a use for them, but the hoard was attractive enough anyway. They smelled of magic, some of them smelled of very powerful magic, and he'd have need for them some day.

It wasn't the only reason he enjoyed the plane, if he was being honest with himself. Each crevice was only really around 10ft wide on average, and they descended into tunnels that snaked underground with all the liquidity of the wisps of aether punctuating the sky. For the 100 years he'd been alive, Bolas was never 5 minutes from a conversation about War. Dragonkind spanned the multiverse, but everywhere you went was somebody's territory - some of the tyrants grew to a colossal size. Bolas nearly died at five years old, barely out of the eggshell, when Elder Lukatar invaded his birthplane to claim it as his own. His mother was brooding at the time, so had no choice to flee. It was a defining memory - always have an answer, and always be better than whoever might be coming for you next. The warrens that busied themselves around the underworld of Zikkam were just his size at the moment, and would make an ideal place to flee, should he need it. 

He'd been flying for an hour when he first heard the scream - pronounced, deep and weighty, the yelp of a dragon.

Part of him hesitated, vulnerable for a moment, like he had been as a whelp. A scream meant danger, and that redefined the very nature of this plane for him. But Bolas was naturally inquisitive, and it took all of a minute for him to decide to chase it. Gaining a small amount of height, he tucked in his wings, and dived down into the dark canyon, following the echo into the depths. He'd been flying downwards at a ninety degree angle for around two minutes before he began to suspect that this wasn't like any other cavern he'd found on Zikkam before, but the cries echoed louder, sounds of desperation and pain, and Bolas' wings beat on.

After another minute, he began to see the light. Pale blue and ghostly, painting the walls of rock with a colour that seemed to almost penetrate physically, leaving the stone smoking with an icy aura. There was a taste of heat in the air, but no difference in the actual temperature. It reminded Bolas of the first time he'd tried fire-breathing as a whelp, the bitter taste of ozone sitting on his tongue after he'd accidentally swallowed his flame. He'd hiccuped in pain for a week - Tirra had just laughed. He shook his head violently, physically ignoring the memory, before touching down on a smooth, marbled floor. The crackling taste was stronger here, but it didn't brace him for the blinding light he'd be greeted with as he raised his head. Wincing, he took a moment for his eyes to readjust, before lifting his lids slightly. 

A hemispherical antechamber stood before him, lit from a single point, floating in the centre of the room. White-hot fire erupted from it, and it took him a moment to tear his eyes away from the brilliance of it. Gazing into that spot felt like the moment he was on the cusp of a plane, walking between the two folds of fabric that separate reality from the blind eternities. Staring into that nexus felt beautiful. Blissful. It felt like oblivion.

The flames in the air were wreathed around a body - a dragon about his size, writhing in pain. A single tendril of the fire snaked from the nexus to its victim, and with each pulse of the flame, shards of its hide were blasted off, and scattered along the floor. A shadow was stained on the wall behind the figure, frozen in disfigured pain. 

Bolas breathed a sigh of relief, before turning to leave. He wasn't under attack, and the foolish whelp had obviously messed with something it shouldn't have. Bolas would leave the artifact to do what it needed to do, and then decide whether he was coming back for the scraps later. Self-preservation was key after all.

But as he sprang to take off, he hesitated. The cries from behind him had stopped being nonsensical, guttural screams.

Instead, the chamber echoed with pleading.

"Help me! Don't leave! Please, help me! I can feel the fire in my veins!"

Another wince.

'I can feel the fire in my veins!' echoed again, around his head this time. A different voice to the one he was hearing. Those where his father's last words as Lukatar's jaws clamped around his throat, leaving him nothing more than a charred husk of the tyrant he once was. Tirra and Nicol were the only ones to survive that invasion. Lukatar has wiped out the rest of the brood - every sibling Bolas had left was part of another family. Sired by another father.

"I can feel the fire in my veins!"

His feet were moving before his mind had made the conscious decision to save the Other Dragon. Before Bolas knew he'd really decided on a course of action, he was charging towards the Nexus, his teeth bared, counter magic flaring up between the tips of his two fledgling horns. He'd freeze it, he reasoned, that'd at least contain it for enough time for the Other Dragon to get away. At the last second, he pounced, and the tips of his two slender horns connected with the empty space in the middle of the room, each anodising on impact. He felt the spell discharge, and then he felt nothing.

* * *

Ugin knew his body was gone. The magic of the gem echoed in his bones, rattling around with a ferocity that no living thing could survive, really. He'd seen the artifact and was instantly drawn to it, the gem throbbing with magical power, each pulse carrying the weight of enough mana to create an entirely new plane. It was attractive. It called to him. It needed him. So, he tried to take it.

The surface of the thing has splintered, and imploded upon itself as soon as the tip of his claw connected. All it needed was a link, and every drop of that world-defining mana poured into Ugin, seemingly from the fabric of reality itself. It was untamed, untouched, it belonged to no school of magic whatsoever. Instead, this was the untempered storm of the blind eternities, tearing into every cell of his body. The last thing he consciously saw with his own, physical eyes was the silhouette of his body, scoured into the wall from the strength of the maelstrom. He'd led there for what felt like days before he heard the Other. The bronze-hide of his savour, standing in the doorway to the tunnel. Ugin asked no questions as to how anyone else even knew about this plane, he was just thankful for such a beautiful coincidence as this. He'd passed out before he saw the intruder's solution. 

"Are you alive?" The voice seemed to worm its way into his head. Telepathy. He had no energy to speak back, no weight in his limbs to even move. It was as if his body was made of smoke. 

"I'm unsure." He thought back. "I'm definitely not dead. I don't think alive and not-dead are the same thing, but at least I'm not dead." Somewhere, as if in the distance, he heard the heavy sound of the Other Dragon slumping onto the stonework beside him. Exhaustion coated his words as he spoke aloud for the first time. 

"I think that makes two of us." 

And there, consciousness departed the both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a conversation in the MtG Tumblr Discord chat. More chapters to come, depending upon interest. Yes, this will turn into UginBolas shipping eventually.


End file.
